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“I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to foist onto consumers … 20 to 30 percent higher energy rates in an opt-out program. If people want to spend more money … to buy green energy … that is terrific…. But to coerce them into doing it in an opt-out program … is the wrong approach.”

- Mark Farrell, San Francisco Supervisor, 2012 (quoted below)

Thousands of San Francisco residents may be sucked into a green energy plan that will raise their electricity rates 77 percent without their knowledge or consent. Beginning next spring, half of the city’s 375,000 residential ratepayers will automatically be enrolled in CleanPowerSF– unless they take action to opt out of the program. Eventually the entire city will be enrolled in the program unless they choose to opt out.

Currently, you don’t have a choice in how PG&E selects your power. Your PG&E electricity is generated from a portfolio that includes carbon-emitting and nuclear energy sources like natural gas and nuclear power. CleanPowerSF will generate your electricity from a 100% renewable electricity portfolio. CleanPowerSF’s energy mixture will utilize resources like solar, wind, biogas and geothermal power, effectively the cleanest energy available in the United States.

City officials are hoping at least 90,000 households will choose to remain in the program — despite paying an average $18 more each month. That could be a safe bet, because many liberal, wealthy San Franciscans will embrace the opportunity to boast that their power is coming from a clean, green, renewable energy source.

Many residents, perhaps tens of thousands, who could not care less where their energy comes from may be stuck with a 23 percent total rate hike (the 77 percent commodity-charge increase averaged down by unchanged items such as transmission). They would be unaware of the change and not know about their option to get out of it–thanks to CleanPowerSF’s “Do nothing, and you will receive cleaner energy; it’s that simple” siren song.

Pro-Consumer Advocates

That possibility bothers three San Francisco supervisors, who offered an amendment to the plan in September to help ensure it only includes willing participants. Their amendment, however, was voted down 8-3.

He acknowledged that the state law enabling the formation of a Community Choice Aggregationprogram requires that it can only be an opt-out situation instead of a voluntary opt in. State legislators were concerned that if such a program were voluntary it would not get enough participants to make it viable. If San Francisco’s program does not attract at least 90,000 participants, the city would be liable for the funding shortfall along with Shell Energy, which could be as much as $15 million.

But Farrell believes the city could work around that constraint.

To me this [should be] a volunteer program or we create a mechanism where we knew the people who are being offered CCA and are being asked to increase their energy rates had at least indicated they wanted to do so….

I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to foist onto consumers an increase of 20 to 30 percent higher energy rates in an opt-out program. If people want to spend more money … to buy green energy from CleanPowerSF, I think that is terrific and we should allow people the ability to do that. But to coerce them into doing it in an opt-out program … is the wrong approach.

Farrell was backed bySupervisor Carmen Chu, who offered an amendment requiring that the initial rollout would only encompass “those customers who have indicated a desire to be included in the initial marketing of the program.” Chu also offered an amendment that would cancel the program if not enough people expressed interest to make it financially viable.

Farrell, Chu and Sean Elsbernd, the three moderates on the mostly leftist Board of Supervisors, voted for the amendments.Scott Wienerwas the only other supervisor to express any interest in making sure that unaware San Franciscans aren’t sucked into the rate hike.

“I think there are very good arguments on both sides of this,” said Wiener, who wanted more information on the impact of Chu’s amendments. “I don’t want to have something passed and signed into law that will cause (San Francisco Public Utility Commissionofficials) to spin around chasing their tails because ultimately the program doesn’t happen because we have inserted a poison pill. We know state law requires an opt out. They are suggesting a preliminary opt in that shows support before proceeding. My question is whether we are able to do that, to have some form of an opt in that precedes the opt out.”

Green Planners at Work

PUC General Manager Ed Harrington, who postponed his retirement in order to shepherd CleanPowerSF to completion, responded that plans are already in place to achieve what Chu’s amendments are seeking to do, and that her amendments could in fact gum up the works.

We are only going and looking at places where a majority of people want to do it in the first place. We are not just randomly capturing people in the city where a majority may not want us. The problem that I see is that to be able to go out and have people sign up, I should be able to tell them the price. If I don’t know how many people are going to sign up or when they’re going to sign up, I can’t lock in the price until I sign the contract with Shell. It really harms the ability to have an intelligent conversation with people when you’re saying, ‘I don’t know what it is, but do you want it?’ It’s much more straightforward to say, ‘This is what it is, here’s your chance to make a choice.’

Wiener made a motion to postpone the decision a week to allow time to figure out a way to make sure that only willing participants are signed up for the program. The motion was voted down 7-3. Wiener then joined the majority in voting down Chu’s amendments.

Supervisor David Camposspearheaded the effort to approve the program, noting that the plan dates back 14 years when current state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, was a supervisor.

“It’s not as ambitious and aggressive a program as many people wanted,” said Campos. “But it’s a program that at the end assures success and viability. At the end of the day it’s really about providing consumers a choice. It’s about making sure that ratepayers in San Francisco have the opportunity to not only have clean energy but to have a meaningful choice, to make sure there are other players in the business of providing energy beyond the utility [PG&E] that has had a monopoly for so long.”

Harrington pointed out that San Francisco has a goal of reducing carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. The city is currently in the process of spending $90 million for solar projects that will provide greenhouse gas reduction equivalent to fewer than 7,000 homes. CleanPowerSF will expand that to 90,000 homes for just $19.5 million, most of which won’t be spent unless the program falls short of the 90,000 signups.

“There’s nothing else anyone has even thought of that has that kind of dramatic impact in San Francisco of such a small dollar amount,” said Harrington. “It’s an incredibly efficient way of spending your money.”

But the clean energy program may not be as clean and wonderful as it’s been touted, according to an SF Weekly. A city controller’s report pointed out that city agencies will be spending millions of dollars more for energy under CleanPowerSF, and that will likely result in reduced city services and jobs.

In addition, the program doesn’t guarantee that 100 percent of the city’s energy will be coming directly through a pipeline from a wind farm or solar array. The Shell contract allows the company to obtain energy from some of the same sources as PG&E (which is doing so at much less cost), including coal and gas. Energy could also come from burning methane from landfills, sewage treatment plants and feedlots — renewable, but not exactly clean.

Veto Option Remains

CleanPowerSF is not yet a done deal. Mayor Ed Lee shares Farrell and Chu’s concern about the opt-out provision, and he may veto the legislation. Still, the board appears to have the eight votes necessary to over-ride a veto. But will those eight votes hold after the public becomes aware that they may be facing a 23 percent rate hike next year?

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Dave Roberts, a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, has written editorials for the San Francisco Examiner and currently contributes to CalWatchdog.com.

4 Comments

This program disgusts me. I’m glad I left California over a decade ago (before the black-outs, before the cap&trade, and before this 100% renewable opt-out program in SF.) “Has the whole world gone crazy?”
I suggest that the anti-growth environmentalists in CA heed the words of Alexander the Great on why he wouldn’t attack the Persians at night,
“I won’t steal my victories like a thief.”

The real devil always is in the non-publicized “any means justifies the end” details inherent to the infamous “strategic planning process” that facilitates the backroom planning and development, then coercive backdoor implementation of any such “Sustainable Development” local action plans (aka Local Agenda 21’s) that successfully obtain “stakeholder” local government endorsement.

The largely unaware and hapless governed typically figure out too late that the punitive outcome confronting them and pointlessness of after-the-fact opposition had been predetermined, given that the implemented scheme typically subsidized at their cost, to punitively manage their “resource overconsumption” behaviour by “pricing signals” to align with international “targets”, had actually been introduced and co-promoted by an activist local public official in the first place.

Under various names, the same “circular” strategic planning, approvals and implementation process is creating Our Common Future in globally “integrated” serfdom, through “local” government adoption and implementation of “local” action plans for “Sustainable Development” in communities everywhere.